Use the Repository

This 90-minute simulation immerses students in the process of designing and organizing a social movement in order to understand how leadership structure, strategic goals, and differentiated roles shape collective action. Students are divided into two movement groups tasked with reviving the Occupy Wall Street movement in response to contemporary economic inequality. Each group operates under a distinct leadership structure—horizontal or hierarchical—and adopts either a reformist or radical strategic orientation. Within each movement, students assume one of three leadership roles: agitators, innovators, or orchestrators. These roles require participants to articulate grievances, develop actionable strategies, and coordinate collective efforts. The contrasting structures and goals create meaningful constraints that influence decision-making, participation, and internal dynamics. The exercise concludes with group presentations and a structured debrief comparing how leadership design and movement goals shaped outcomes. 

This simulation challenges students to confront the political and moral complexity of equitable distribution. Participants are placed on a task force at your university charged with allocating $1 million to address a campus issue of their choosing. Drawing on Deborah Stone’s chapters on Equity and Numbers in Policy Paradox, students must determine how to define the problem, select criteria for distribution, and justify their allocation decisions. The exercise highlights how classification, thresholds, measurement, and competing definitions of fairness shape policy outcomes. Students must not only design an equitable distribution plan but also develop an evaluation strategy using numbers to defend their decisions. During class debate, peers challenge their criteria, assumptions, and measurement strategies, requiring participants to revise or defend their approach. The goal is to move students beyond abstract commitments to fairness and toward a concrete understanding of how equity is constructed, contested, and measured in real policy settings.

For decades, US colleges and universities have been stuck in an endless loop of confusing decisions, policies, and emotions about student speech on campus. Whether speech is allowed, censored, or sanctioned depends on who has decision making power rather than campus-community norms that protect learning for students.